Club Sports Hall of Fame inductee Bloomfield helped found DI women’s hockey program, lead it to first national title in 2015

Paul-Bloomfield-2017-ACHA-National-Championships

DI women's hockey Head Coach Paul Bloomfield directs the Lady Flames from behind the bench at the ACHA DI National Championships in Columbus, Ohio, in 2017, his final season at the helm. (Photo by Leah Stauffer)

Club Sports Hall of Fame inductee Bloomfield helped found DI women’s hockey program, lead it to first national title in 2015

2/13/2024 12:19:00 PM | Women's D1 Hockey

After serving as head coach of Liberty's top men's hockey team in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Paul Bloomfield guided the Lady Flames for 11 seasons, building up the program with solid recruiting classes.

Paul-Bloomfield-Kaylee-Vandjelovic-Kirk-Handy-Jonathan-Chung — Paul Bloomfield holds the 2014-15 Club Sports Women's Team of the Year plaque after the Lady Flames won their first national
title, beside assistant coaches Kaylee Vandjelovic, Jonathan Chung (right) and Club Sports Director of Athletics Kirk Handy.

Paul Bloomfield, the founding head coach of Liberty University's ACHA Division I women's hockey team, will follow five of his former players into the Club Sports Hall of Fame when he is inducted on Friday at 1 p.m. in the Montview Alumni Ballroom.

Bloomfield, who guided the Lady Flames to their first national championship in 2015 and a record of 234-89-20 over 11 seasons before stepping down in 2017, began his coaching career at Liberty as head coach of the men's program from 1999-2001.

Paul-Bloomfield-portrait — Bloomfield's portrait before the 2015-16 season

The son of a farmer who restricted him from playing hockey and grandson of a traveling evangelist who was a friend of Liberty founder Dr. Jerry Falwell, Bloomfield came to Lynchburg after his grandfather's death in the mid-1990s. After selling his home construction business with 33 employees in Ontario, he was encouraged by Falwell to take the coaching reins of the men's hockey team on his first visit to Liberty over Easter Weekend in 1999 during a random meeting at Shaker's restaurant in Lynchburg, Va.

"If you knew how he operated, literally like within two minutes of meeting him, it was like you'd known him your whole life," Bloomfield said of Falwell.

He finally agreed to take on the challenge after reconnecting with Falwell in Israel that summer as a chaperon on a trip that took 300 students to the Holy Land.

"I went down to the lobby of the hotel in Tel Aviv at like 2 a.m. and Jerry's sitting at a high top reading his Bible and he turns and looks at me and says, 'Bloomfield, are you going to start our hockey team or aren't you?'" Bloomfield recalled. "That's how it kind of all started, and the rest is history."

At about the same time, a church in Roanoke, Va., offered Bloomfield a pastoral position, and he and his wife, Sharon, and children Julie ('05, '07, '11) and Scott ('07) relocated from Ontario to Virginia that September.

Bloomfield had gotten his start in coaching Scott's youth teams throughout his formative years, and Scott went on to play for the Flames' DII men's team and serve as assistant coach for Paul's first few seasons with the DI women. Eventually Bloomfield stepped down as women's coach to help Scott run Equity Enterprise, Inc., a home construction business in Lynchburg that builds approximately 20 homes per year and has plans to construct 32 more in 2024.

Paul-Bloomfield-Josh-Graham-Scott-Bloomfield — Bloomfield stands with assistant coaches Josh Graham and Scott Bloomfield in 2009.

As the men's head coach, Bloomfield scheduled the Flames to play against ACHA Division I teams even before they officially transitioned to that level in 2006. That was the same year the LaHaye Ice Center opened and the women's program started, after current DII women's Head Coach Rena Leone filed the paperwork with the ACHA.

Bloomfield coached Club Sports Athletic Director Kirk Handy for his senior season in 1999-2000 before helping to bring him back from Ontario to be his successor. Handy is now in his 24th season at the helm.

While coaching for Liberty, Bloomfield served as a pastor for five years before working as a counselor for troubled teenagers at Straight Street of Roanoke for another year. He filled a similar role in working with his players, offering wisdom and guidance in their lives as much as coaching instruction to refine their games on the ice.

"He was a good father figure to the players," said Justin Forth, who was his assistant coach for five seasons from 2011-14 and 2015-17 and will serve as his presenter during Friday's ceremony. "We worked really well together. He was more serious in demeanor on the bench; I was a little bit lighter. He was easy to get along with and he trusted me right from the beginning to help him fulfill the vision of the program and where we wanted it to go."

Bloomfield said coaching the women's team was vastly different than developing players on the men's team, who were often more independent and eager to get out on their own.

"It really was a totally different animal," he said. "In recruiting, you had to get to know the parents, build their confidence with me. The freshman year is a hard year. They're away from home for the first time. They're homesick. They have new coaches, new teachers, new education topics, and just a lot of changes."

Bloomfield-McCombe-Forth — Bloomfield and Assistant Coach Justin Forth honor Nikki McCombe on Senior Night in 2014.

Forth, who played on the same teams as Scott Bloomfield and current assistant coach Josh Graham while at Liberty, said both Bloomfields did an excellent job of recruiting.

"They were passionate about it," he said. "They knew that was how you would grow a program and attract other good players. Because of the caliber of players they were bringing in when I started, that made my job as an assistant coach easier."

Forth said while Bloomfield was successful in building a national championship program, he placed more value on the relationships he built with his players, and seeing them succeed in life after Liberty.

"(Winning titles) was all second to Training Champions for Christ," Forth said. "That was what he put first on his priority list, and he did a good job of that."

Forth, who replaced Scott Bloomfield as Paul's assistant coach, said he was also the beneficiary of Bloomfield's life experience, both in the hockey and business worlds. Forth has served as Club Sports assistant director of facilities for the past six seasons under current ACHA DI women's Head Coach and former ACHA DII men's Head Coach Chris Lowes, helping the team add five more national titles in that span.

"He's somebody who was a mentor to me both with coaching as well as in business," Forth said. "He did a great job of reflecting Christ's love in the way he did things. One thing he had in the majority of the players was their trust. They felt safe working with him and trusted him to have their best interest at heart and he did a great job."

As proud as he is of the Lady Flames' rapid success on the ice — guiding them to a 25-7-1 mark and No. 4 national ranking in their first full season in 2006-07 and their first national championship in the ninth year as a program — Bloomfield hopes his legacy will be that he established a solid foundation of faith.

He reminisced about his players' spiritual journeys at Liberty at the recent wedding of former Lady Flames forward Nikki McCombe, attended by several of her former teammates.
"We think there's about 51 girls that came to know the Lord through Liberty Hockey, non-Christian girls, mostly from Canada, that came down to Liberty … which is just amazing," Bloomfield said. "A lot of those girls I still interact with every week. Those girls are having families now."

Paul-Bloomfield-road-trip-crew — Bloomfield (right) and his team prepare to take a road trip in the program's early years.

In that sense, his recruiting efforts were not only fruitful in building up the program, but in expanding the Kingdom of God as many went on to make first-time professions of faith while on campus.

Bloomfield said the spiritual growth the Lady Flames experienced went hand-in-hand with their development as well-rounded players who complemented one another on the ice.

"A lot of our success was we didn't always have the best hockey players, the best recruits that we could get, because the big schools were grabbing them," he said. "But the thing that really made us, we were really good in finding a talent in this girl and finding a talent in this girl that complemented one another in the way they played, and put them on the same line, and that made a huge difference. It was a good mix of Christian girls and non-Christian girls, and they came to the Lord through Liberty, because of the hockey."

Bloomfield enters the Hall of Fame in the steps of his former players Patti Smith ('10), a 2016 inductee who was the first goalie he recruited to the program; Kristin Frescura ('11), the Lady Flames' second-leading scorer all-time who was inducted in 2017; Stacey McCombe ('13), inducted in 2018; Sarah Stevenson ('15), Liberty's first professional player honored posthumously in 2019; and all-time leading scorer Carrie Jickling ('16), his three-year captain who was inducted last spring.

By Ted Allen/Staff Writer